


You're My Brother

by rachel6141997



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brothers, Character Study, Dark fluff, Fluff, Grief, Love, Major character death - Freeform, Neither Mycroft nor Sherlock can ever manage to say outright what they actually mean, Pain, Pirates, Sacrifice, implied badass molly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-06
Updated: 2012-11-06
Packaged: 2017-11-18 02:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rachel6141997/pseuds/rachel6141997
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft Holmes is the British Government.<br/>He is also a master in several forms of martial arts, weaponry, and the use of an umbrella with deadly purpose.<br/>He knows over five hundred different languages, the contents of at least a thousand textbooks, and details of several millions people's private lives.<br/>He is responsible for all of them and more besides.</p>
<p>But first and foremost, always, he is Sherlock's older brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're My Brother

**Author's Note:**

> Just fluff. Or, at least, it started that way, and then got more serious.
> 
> Kid!Holmes is sweet, and Mycroft loves his little brother.

Mycroft Holmes is the British Government.  
He is also a master in several forms of martial arts, weaponry, and the use of an umbrella with deadly purpose.  
He knows over five hundred different languages, the contents of at least a thousand textbooks, and details of several millions people's private lives.  
He is responsible for all of them and more besides.

But first and foremost, always, he is Sherlock's older brother.

***

 

When I was six, I wanted to be a pirate.

 

***

Even then, at the tender age of thirteen, Mycroft was always busy. He was smart, and organized, and intelligent. He was responsible.

But no one, absolutely no one, can resist a six year old Sherlock Holmes when he wants to play pirates.

"Please, Mycroft? Please?" he begged, bright blue eyes staring up at his older brother.

"Sherlock," Mycroft said, turning to him with a sigh, knowing the battle was already lost, "I have work too do."

"But you're always doing work," Sherlock pouted, his eyes filling with tears. Mycroft scowled.

"You are a manipulative little brat, you know that, right?" Sherlock brightened immediately, knowing this was an aquiesance.

"Yes, I am, aren't I," he said cheerfully, grinning as he tugged his older brother out of the chair. "But I'm also your brother."

"And I'm yours."

 

***

 

When I was ten, my parents let my tutor go, and I went to school for the first time.

 

***

 

Mycroft knew something was wrong the moment he stepped through the door. No cheerful, too-tall mess of curly black hair and sparkling blue eyes met him at the door with cries of "Mycroft, Mycroft! Guess what I did!"

The house was quiet.

Far too quiet.

There was no one else in the house that day, but even so, the ten-year old SHerlock Holmes usually made more than enough noise.

 

With deepening foreboding, Mycroft wandered through the house, checking every nook and cranny, calling out for his younger brother. 

Mycroft found him on the roof. He was crouched, arms around his knees, leaning his wieght against the old brock chimney, sitting in a small space of flat area.

"What are you doing up here?" His voice was calm, belying the tight knot of fear in his stomach.

"Thinking." Sherlock's voice was soft, hoarse. He'd been crying.

"About what?"

"Jumping off the roof. Or pushing someone off."

"What did he say?"

"He or she."

"The English language defers to the masculine. I stand by my original wording. Now stop dodging my question."

" _She_ said I was a freak. A bastard. A waste of space." Sherlock's voice was calm, regaining it's usual smoothness. He'd learned to hide his emotions from Mycroft, after all.

"And why on earth does that bother you? You don't care what they think." There was a long, long silence at that, and Mycroft began to wonder if Sherlock did, in fact, care. Perhaps he'd failed, after all.

"Because," it came at last in a shaky whisper, "What if it's true?"

And Mycroft wanted to find whatever female had spoken to his little brother like that and flay her alive. Hissing like an angry cat, he pulled Sherlock to his feet and dragged him inside the house where he pinned him against the wall, startled ( _but unafraid_ ) blue eyes level with his own.

"Never," he snarled, "Think such a thing again. You are a Holmes, legitimate and true, and you are brilliant and unique, and you are  _never_ a waste of space." he let his words hang into the silence, than lowered Sherlock, and said softly, "And you are my brother, and that is all that matters."

Sherlock looked at him for a long moment. And then he smiled, and said, "Let's play pirates."

 

***

 

When I was twenty-three, I overdosed for the first time.

 

***

 

Mycroft was the one who found him, lying on his bed, eyes glazed and breathing shallow.

He took one glance at the drug paraphenelia lying scattered on the floor, and his hand dropped to his cell phone.

 

Within ten minutes, he was in the ambulance, holding his brother's fevered hand.

"Oh, Sherlock," he murmured, "You couldn't have stayed clean for Mummy? Not even for Christmas?"

At age thirty, Mycroft was a "minor government official" whose job was far, far more important than anyone in his family- a family full of Holmeses- yet realized. He should have been in work.

 

But for the next three days, he stayed by his brother's bedside.

"Why are you here?" Sherlock asked at last, exhaustion etched into every line of his face, but his eyes were clear and focused on his brother.

"Because you're my brother," Mycroft answered, and was rewarded with a rare- incredibly rare, in the last few years- smile, before Sherlock drifted off to sleep, dreaming of pirates, no doubt.

 

***

 

When I was thirty, I faked my own death.

 

***

 

Mycroft cried when he heard.

 

Not that anyone but him knew. When the memo found it's way to his desk, he quickly scanned it, signalled for Anthea to leave, and locked his door. He sat down at his desk, head in his hands, and quietly wept.

 

Everything was for nothing, in the end.

"God, Sherlock, don't be dead." The words left him of their own violition, and he imagined he could hear Sherlock laugh bitterly and ask why. Mycroft couldn't bring himself to give an answer Sherlock already knew.

 

It didn't take him long to find out the truth, and so he wasn't  _too_ surpised when, a week later, Sherlock turned up inside his house.

"I can't rely on Molly anymore. She doesn't deserve it." Mycroft didn't respond, merely cooking dinner for two rather than one that night, a tacit acceptance.

In the next few years, he vows to help Sherlock in every way he can, because it's all his fault. And, when Sherlock demanded more, "Because you're my brother."

Sherlock gave him a pained smile, and accepted his assistance in infiltrating a pirate ring in order to destroy one more strand of Moriarty's web.

 

***

 

When I was thirty-three, I held my brother in my arms as he lay dying.

 

***

 

In the end, despite his life-long expectation to the contrary, it wasn't an assassination that finally took down Mycroft Holmes.

It was sentiment.

Or, rather, a poisoned blade meant for his brother.

It was a stark, black and white situation- duck the blade, like Moran expected him too, and let it hit his unsuspecting brother, or stay in place. And die.

 

Myroft never moved. It was like ice, slicing into his side, and then like fire, as the acid ate away at his flesh.

He didn't scream, but a small, pained whimper escaped him. The sound was so incongrous in the scene, that despite the noise of the battle, when Sherlock heard it, he turned immediately.

Mycroft only learned what happened later, as he slowly died of poison in the hospitol.  At the time it was happening, he only registered a haze of pain.

 

Sherlock killed Moran, and kneeled at his brother's side, rocking him back and forth in his arms.

 

He dreamed of pirates- hallucinations borne of poison and pain. He saw Sherlock grinning from  beneath a tricorn hat, and John looking decidedly rougish in his pirate's get up, and, surprisingly, Molly Hooper, looking feral and deadly as the ship's second mate.

When the visions faded, Sherlock was holding his hand.

"Why?" He needed to say nothing more. They both understood. Mycroft smiled wanly at him.

"Because you're my brother."

 

And Sherlock wept as the life faded from his brother's eyes.

 

***

 

It took me too long to understand what he meant when he said "You're my brother." I always thought he did it out of familial loyalty.

 

It wasn't until he died that I truly understood.

 

And over his grave, instead of whispering, "I love you," I said softly, "I'm your brother, Mycroft. And you have always been mine."

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe I killed of Mycroft, he's one of my favorite characters.
> 
> But I think this fic turned out really well, although please say so if you beg to differ.
> 
> Comments are food for the soul.
> 
> I have no britpicker, so feel free to point out my mistakes.


End file.
